I don't get your opposition to us caring about how our country is run. Its basically the heart of a democracy to have educated voters free of political influence. Us bitching and moaning about our current shit show of an admin is what drives the next election cycle.

I feel like I understand the philosophy behind the republican mantra. At least I feel like i used to understand it.

Rather than try and call it out this guy does it better than I ever could.

When dictators took over countries such as Germany, Italy, Russia, Argentina and Venezuela, the body politic had usually already been weakened by war, depression or chronic misrule – and often all three. Today, the United States faces a threat from a would-be despot of its own: a president who incessantly undermines his own Justice Department, calls for his political opponents to be investigated and locked up, denounces the press as the “enemy of the people,” and lies incessantly while telling his followers that they must trust whatever he now says over what the media report or even over what he himself was previously recorded as saying on video.

Our big advantage – what sets us apart from countries that have succumbed to authoritarianism in the past – is that the American body politic is relatively healthy. We have a 229-year-old tradition of the rule of law, the economy is strong, and robust checks and balances continue to operate. The most notable check and balance is, of course, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who continues quietly racking up indictments and convictions.

President Trump has tried with all his might to undermine what he calls a “Rigged Witch Hunt,” but to judge by the evidence of the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, he is failing: Only 36 percent of those surveyed approve of the president, while 49 percent support his impeachment and 63 percent back the Mueller investigation. Assuming the poll is not simply an outlier, it suggests that the body politic is rejecting the Trumpist infection.

Further evidence of that rejection came Saturday with the moving funeral of Sen. John S. McCain (R.-Ariz.) at Washington National Cathedral. The entire political world, Democrat and Republican alike, came together to honor an American hero. Two former presidents spoke; a third sat in the front row. Conspicuously absent was the current president. He was not welcome – and not missed.

Every eulogy for McCain was also, implicitly, a rebuke of the president who denied that he was a hero. When former senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) extolled McCain for exemplifying values at odds with “the tribal partisanship and personal-attack politics that have recently characterized our life,” when former president George W. Bush praised McCain for his reminding us that “We are better than this, America is better than this,” when former president Barack Obama noted that “so much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse, can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage” — there was no doubt who the speakers or the audience were thinking of. They had in mind a president who spent the morning, not honoring McCain from afar, but giving vent to his pathologies on Twitter before hitting the golf course.

Subtext became text when the senator’s daughter, Meghan McCain, delivered the most powerful and passionate eulogy I have ever heard. “We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness – the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served,” she said. When she added that “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again, because America was always great,” the entire assembly, more than 4,000-strong, erupted in thunderous applause of the kind I have never seen before at a funeral.

I was sitting there, and it was an electric moment. This represented a collective rejection by America’s entire political class of the dishonorable, dishonest and divisive politics represented by Trump — and a yearning for the ennobling and principled leadership represented by McCain. When everyone stood near the end of the service and we all sang the final stanza of “America the Beautiful” (“O beautiful for patriot dream …”), I am sure I was not alone in seeing it as a symbolic rejection of the ugliness of the Trump years. Maybe I was imagining things, but I think not. It tells you something when simply extolling the virtues of America can seem like a criticism of its president.

I have come to feel pessimistic lately about the future of America — demoralized because so many of my fellow citizens have endorsed a demagogue who threatens our democracy. But the McCain funeral offered a welcome moment of hope and grace — a promise of deliverance — at a dark time in our nation’s history. It affirmed what McCain himself said in his farewell statement when he affirmed his “heartfelt faith in Americans.” “Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here,” McCain counseled. “Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.”

I despair today a little less after the uplifting spectacle of the McCain funeral. I left feeling, as no doubt the funeral’s architect and honoree intended, re-energized in my desire to fight for the principles that he dedicated his life to. I hope others feel the same way. Together we can restore the tarnished beauty of America.

You can't go back and you can't stand still
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will

When your choices are between a pedophile religious zealot or a dem suddenly the pedophile religious zealot doesn't sound too bad. - PLOW

honestly, mate... you don't even realise you're being fucking brainwashed (again).
count how many times the damned word america features in the forwarded and one-sided post above?
I'd bet it gave you throat lumps, goosebumps and fist pumps.
and how hard do you think it would be for me to find the pole opposite article on this wondrous bible of factual news we type upon?

in true american fashion you will forget about this mccain fella inside a fortnight and move onto some other sepps media-fueled distraction.
another mass shooting should take care of it, hey.

...or would you like to bet on it?

america doesn't work. if it did, it would.
or do you lot need more time to work it out?

let's see. just off the top off my head... what doesn't work (that you embrace)?

true story: new sepps girl at scarlett's school has been put back two full years so she can catch up. she's 10yrs and full of shit already.

but look. I'm willing to take the brunt of your displeasure for your country.
I will be that foreigner for you.
whatever makes you feel better.
it's all horseshit that doesn't directly affect you anyway. so stop crusading; it's useless, hackneyed and terribly boring.

"Prior to contracts being approved I would strongly advise that you receive two further quotes from other project builders..."

I was going to start at the bottom and work backwards but I think i'll just stick to the end.

Ricky Bobby voice "With all due respect" : Who the fuck are you to say America doesn't work? Worse yet who the fuck are you to say we don't have control of what our country does and what it means for our resources.

Trumpsterfire's EPA is actively trying to dissolve the ESA . That means we lose what little protections we have left for our steelhead and salmon runs. They have already reversed the clean water act..

Thats what I know of in the PNW. I gotta assume its much worse for our friends in "coal" country.

But here is why America works:

Despite McCuntal's stacking the courts judges are still non-partisan and uphold the laws faithfully. Pick an issue Trump has "won" and see if it passed the courts. O'bamacare, DACA, etc.

This is just a step backwards to wake people up. Its the last gasp of a dying older white man GOP. Perhaps the plan is t have the old guard go down in such flames it will be easy to usher in a new guard?

You can't go back and you can't stand still
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will

When your choices are between a pedophile religious zealot or a dem suddenly the pedophile religious zealot doesn't sound too bad. - PLOW

This is just a step backwards to wake people up. Its the last gasp of a dying older white man GOP. Perhaps the plan is t have the old guard go down in such flames it will be easy to usher in a new guard?

my last 200 posts will echo this sediment.

yeah. I know.
and I, as sure as freshly fucked bollocks, don't need you to tell me.

edit: policy.
throw that word around if you like your face punched in austria.

Exactly. If you actually read the article I posted its just saying that whatever your policies are this is no way to go about them.

November will be a huge tell on what our American people are. I've never been a "get the vote out" type. Id prefer educated voters. seems like that backfired and here we are. Now I'm just hoping people vote en mass.

Parties aside its been a pretty interesting stress test on our system. We've learned that a part of American society is fully susceptible to dick-tater-ship. We've also learned that this weak-ass congress has no balls.